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When I attained my eleventh year, the Count de Lure, head of one of the chief families of Valenciennes, happened to be one of the boarders at the Little Chateau; and as that excellent man had taken a great fancy to me, he asked my parents permission that I should become a companion to his son, who was about. the same age.
Count William I. of Hainault, Holland, and Zealand was Edward III.'s father-in-law, and, during the last months of his strenuous career, he welcomed Bishop Burghersh, Edward's chief diplomatist, to his favourite residence of Valenciennes, where from April, 1337, the English ambassadors kept great state, "sparing as little as if the king were present there in his own person," and striving with all their might to build up an alliance with the princes of the Low Countries.
He was an unwavering Catholic, held sectaries in utter loathing, and, after the image-breaking, took a positive pleasure in hanging ministers, together with their congregations, and in pressing the besieged Christians of Valenciennes to extremities.
At last the burgomaster, with difficulty, succeeded in bringing matters so far towards a peaceful settlement that twelve of the town counsellors were sent into the camp with the following conditions: The edict by which Valenciennes had been charged with treason and declared an enemy to the country was required to be recalled, the confiscation of their goods revoked, and the prisoners on both sides restored to liberty; the garrison was not to enter the town before every one who thought good to do so had placed himself and his property in security; and a pledge to be given that the inhabitants should not be molested in any manner, and that their expenses should be paid by the king.
We saw Fenelon's head here, preserved in a church. But to return from archbishops to cambrics. Our hostess at Cambray was a dealer in cambrics, and in her bale of baptistes she seemed literally to have her being. She was, in spite of cambric and Valenciennes lace of which she had a dirty superfluity on her cap lined with pink the very ugliest of the female species I had ever beheld.
About half a mile from the landing place a smuggler named Hunt lived on a dreary and unwholesome fen where he had no neighbours but a few rude shepherds. His dwelling was singularly well situated for a contraband traffic in French wares. Cargoes of Lyons silk and Valenciennes lace sufficient to load thirty packhorses had repeatedly been landed in that dismal solitude without attracting notice.
So far he connived at Brederode's proceedings, as he had a perfect right to do, for Walcheren was within what had been the Prince's government, and he had no disposition that these cities should share the fate of Tourney, Valenciennes, Bois le Duc, and other towns which had already passed or were passing under the spears of foreign mercenaries.
In 1361, John Froissart, an adventurous young clerk from Valenciennes, sought out a career for himself in the household of his countrywoman, Queen Philippa, bearing with him as his credentials a draft of a verse chronicle which was his first attempt at historical composition. He came to England at the right moment.
On July 12, 1793, the Austrians took Condé, and on July 28, Valenciennes; while on July 25, Kleber, starving, surrendered Mayence. Nothing now but their own inertia stood between the allies and La Vendée.
Looking out from the Vimy Ridge six weeks ago, and driving thence through Arras across the Drocourt-Quéant line to Douai and Valenciennes, I was in the very heart of that triumphant stand of the Third and First Armies round Arras which really determined the fate of the German attack. The Vimy Ridge from the west is a stiffish climb.
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